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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I used to jump in package is the pass just for the capability but I did learn the hard way you better look the license first.

I want you if you pls could, resume in couple of line what GPL 1 or 2 or 3 on license means?

And I did it again I want to draw like in oscilloscope in GTKmm using Cairo, just because it was suggested (on the net) and then some time on my internet search for finding somethings someone talking about the license which it may just be 3. I want to work in environment which is open source but if I do something I don't want to release I don't have to. :-/

What they have in common is this: You have to make source code available to whomever you provide the compiled binary.

If all of the licenses used by your software are LGPL, the requirements are even less stringent: you must make the source code available for the LGPL'd files, and the linkable object files (*.o) necessary for building the executable, to whomever the linked executable is distributed.

Note that this doesn't mean you have to hand over a copy of the source with the executable. It is legally sufficient to provide the source upon demand, or provide an URL from which the source can be obtained. (And it is sufficient that you only provide this to the specific parties who have the executable. If a third party, who does not have access to the executable, demands access to the source, you may refuse.)

If your executable is not distributed, but only provided as a service running on your own infrastructure (like a web application), then unless it is infected with the AGPL you are not legally obliged to make source code available.

(ObDisclaimer: I am not a lawyer, just an engineer who's been working with GPL'd stuff since 1996.)

What they have in common is this: You have to make source code available to whomever you provide the compiled binary.

If all of the licenses used by your software are LGPL, the requirements are even less stringent: you must make the source code available for the LGPL'd files, and the linkable object files (*.o) necessary for building the executable, to whomever the linked executable is distributed.

Note that this doesn't mean you have to hand over a copy of the source with the executable. It is legally sufficient to provide the source upon demand, or provide an URL from which the source can be obtained. (And it is sufficient that you only provide this to the specific parties who have the executable. If a third party, who does not have access to the executable, demands access to the source, you may refuse.)

If your executable is not distributed, but only provided as a service running on your own infrastructure (like a web application), then unless it is infected with the AGPL you are not legally obliged to make source code available.

(ObDisclaimer: I am not a lawyer, just an engineer who's been working with GPL'd stuff since 1996.)

Thanks

I love open source I would like to believe one day I will give back what it has gave it to me. But I want to the on place on which if I develop something is my choice to release it. I am normal scenario if I do develop something I think its good for me put out there to other use it too, its great maybe other improve it and all enjoyed the work its great the idea is very nice I am on board, but Also we live in a Capitals system so I do something/system to make money I don't want someone download your system and the compete with your business in the same market without doing any work, I don't see that fair. What do you think?

I love open source I would like to believe one day I will give back what it has gave it to me. But I want to the on place on which if I develop something is my choice to release it. I am normal scenario if I do develop something I think its good for me put out there to other use it too, its great maybe other improve it and all enjoyed the work its great the idea is very nice I am on board, but Also we live in a Capitals system so I do something/system to make money I don't want someone download your system and the compete with your business in the same market without doing any work, I don't see that fair. What do you think?

I'm a capitalist, myself, but I think much of the common wisdom about capitalism is wrong.

Success for a technology business is about 10% technology, 90% everything else (sales, marketing, support, applying technical skills, and just plain working hard).

If you make the core technologies of your business available to the world, then sure, it's possible that a competitor might glean some advantage from it, but it's a certainty that (if your technology's any good) other people will use it, improve it, and donate their improvements back into the project, to your business' benefit.

It's also possible for free use of your technology to bring more business to you. For example, in 1996 IBM paid Cygnus Solutions millions of $$$ to port the GNU tools to their PowerPC platform, and then released the port into the world. This was intended to drive greater adoption of the platform, resulting in greater sales of IBM-made PowerPC processors.

For my own part, I'm working towards starting my own cloud-ETL business, and releasing my software as open-source projects as it is developed (and it's mostly gluing together other open-source technology anyway). While I hope it will be useful to others, I also suspect there are few people out there who can stitch all of the pieces together into a cohesive whole as well as I can, or make it scale across a nontrivial server farm. If someone with such skills is in competition against me, that's a problem entirely aside from source code availability.

Now, all that aside, the choice is yours. If you want to keep your secret sauce a secret, you're in good company -- lots of businesses make the same decision.

How they do it varies. Some only use non-GPL software, like the BSD-licensed software. It is non-viral, and only requires that the copyright notice be provided to users, and puts restrictions on use of the authors' name in advertisements. Microsoft, for example, uses a great deal of BSD-licensed open-source technology in the software they ship with Windows.

You can also use LGPL'd software, which does not require open-sourcing the proprietary components of an application, as long as it compiles to object files separate from the LGPL'd components.

Or, my favorite, you can make your product available as a web service. This means you can use all of the open-source technology you like (but not AGPL'd tech!) and don't have to share any of it.

This model also tremendously simplifies and amplifies other aspects of your business:

You don't have to worry about distribution, simplifying sales.

You have direct, deep access to the system while the users are using it, simplifying and enhancing technical support.

You have control over the hardware and operating system, simplifying development and testing (no need to test on all of the different versions of Windows / MacOSX / Android / whatever your users might be running).

Also, with a web service, you can charge a monthly fee for its use, and charge progressively for greater use. It also makes the processing power of an entire datacenter at your users' disposal, not just their desktop PC (this was the point of Discovery Mining's service -- it basically did what Summation and Concordance did, but with the combined capabilities of five hundred servers instead of just one desktop PC, allowing for processing of much larger datasets).

Part of the appeal to me personally is that I can develop and run my software on Slackware :-) and then anyone with a browser can use it.

If you don't take anything else from the conversation, take this: Technology is the least important part of making a technology company succeed. I've worked for mostly startups, some of them with fantastic technology, but they succeeded or failed on their other merits / shortcomings. I've also worked for a couple of "enterprise" software companies, and was shocked to see their software was so poorly written. But it didn't matter, because they excelled at the other 90% of running their business.

So if you need to use GPL'd technology to make the technology your company needs, don't worry about it. Just do it, and abide by the license requirements. Then focus on the other 90%.

If I'm understanding your question correctly:
When you use open-source software, you are free to download the sources and compile them for your own use. You are also free to modify the sources anyway you like and compile and use the resulting binaries. *It is only when you distribute binaries to someone else, that you have to make the sources available to them -whether the sources are modified or not.* Again: only when you distribute binaries are you required to make the sources available. Most especially, you cannot modify the sources and distribute binaries from that code and then not make the sources available to anyone who receives those binaries -even if they don't use them.

GPL-3 is less free than GPL-2. GPL-1 was not used very much. GPL-2 may still be the most commonly used of the three. All of the versions are the same with respect to what I said above.

I'm a capitalist, myself, , don't worry about it. Just do it, and abide by the license requirements. Then focus on the other 90%.

Thanks ttk lots in you answer. Now looking back to it I should have just concentrate more on the development and don't worried about it.

There was and wasn't a problem because I was planning in creating a product which suppose to be a systems and then use it to provide a service, so as fat as the development it always remain in the company, you hire people or sub contract the only problem is while they are sub-contracted you will lease them your hardware with some some software which could be under open source license. So I am not sure if that case when you lease a product which they have to return at the end on the agreement that count as release? Because they will pay you for the service to use your product not for the product itself.

The other part if its success you could always use that money to buy a commercial version and develop all again and sale that, but that is a lost of effort to, if you could franchise you business and lease or sale with same development, the chance to make more money with the same effort if you select the right license?

I'm a capitalist, myself, but I think much of the common wisdom about capitalism is wrong.

Success for a technology business is about 10% technology, 90% everything else (sales, marketing, support, applying technical skills, and just plain working hard).

If you make the core technologies of your business available to the world, then sure, it's possible that a competitor might glean some advantage from it, but it's a certainty that (if your technology's any good) other people will use it, improve it, and donate their improvements back into the project, to your business' benefit.

It's also possible for free use of your technology to bring more business to you. For example, in 1996 IBM paid Cygnus Solutions millions of $$$ to port the GNU tools to their PowerPC platform, and then released the port into the world. This was intended to drive greater adoption of the platform, resulting in greater sales of IBM-made PowerPC processors.

For my own part, I'm working towards starting my own cloud-ETL business, and releasing my software as open-source projects as it is developed (and it's mostly gluing together other open-source technology anyway). While I hope it will be useful to others, I also suspect there are few people out there who can stitch all of the pieces together into a cohesive whole as well as I can, or make it scale across a nontrivial server farm. If someone with such skills is in competition against me, that's a problem entirely aside from source code availability.

Now, all that aside, the choice is yours. If you want to keep your secret sauce a secret, you're in good company -- lots of businesses make the same decision.

How they do it varies. Some only use non-GPL software, like the BSD-licensed software. It is non-viral, and only requires that the copyright notice be provided to users, and puts restrictions on use of the authors' name in advertisements. Microsoft, for example, uses a great deal of BSD-licensed open-source technology in the software they ship with Windows.

You can also use LGPL'd software, which does not require open-sourcing the proprietary components of an application, as long as it compiles to object files separate from the LGPL'd components.

Or, my favorite, you can make your product available as a web service. This means you can use all of the open-source technology you like (but not AGPL'd tech!) and don't have to share any of it.

This model also tremendously simplifies and amplifies other aspects of your business:

You don't have to worry about distribution, simplifying sales.

You have direct, deep access to the system while the users are using it, simplifying and enhancing technical support.

You have control over the hardware and operating system, simplifying development and testing (no need to test on all of the different versions of Windows / MacOSX / Android / whatever your users might be running).

Also, with a web service, you can charge a monthly fee for its use, and charge progressively for greater use. It also makes the processing power of an entire datacenter at your users' disposal, not just their desktop PC (this was the point of Discovery Mining's service -- it basically did what Summation and Concordance did, but with the combined capabilities of five hundred servers instead of just one desktop PC, allowing for processing of much larger datasets).

Part of the appeal to me personally is that I can develop and run my software on Slackware :-) and then anyone with a browser can use it.

If you don't take anything else from the conversation, take this: Technology is the least important part of making a technology company succeed. I've worked for mostly startups, some of them with fantastic technology, but they succeeded or failed on their other merits / shortcomings. I've also worked for a couple of "enterprise" software companies, and was shocked to see their software was so poorly written. But it didn't matter, because they excelled at the other 90% of running their business.

So if you need to use GPL'd technology to make the technology your company needs, don't worry about it. Just do it, and abide by the license requirements. Then focus on the other 90%.

This is extremely useful information for those of us who haven't had much exposure to licensing. I am going to save this post as reference.

Yes, leasing your software does count as distributing -even allowing someone to try out the software counts. A copy for your brother also counts... Anyone who uses your binaries must benefit from the same freedom that you had when acquiring the software.

Yes, leasing your software does count as distributing -even allowing someone to try out the software counts. A copy for your brother also counts... Anyone who uses your binaries must benefit from the same freedom that you had when acquiring the software.